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Awareness

went to this tonight. For those who haven’t heard of it it’s a march to end violence against women. Anyway let’s just say that about 90% of those there were feminists, unfortuantly feminists scare me a bit… and I felt that I did not deserve to be there as I am not a strong emowered women, I am a weak and broken woman. So ye… not feeling great, however, I did discover an organisation while I was there called “object” which is an organisation set up to challenge the sexual objectification of women, I have now joined said organisation 🙂

After the march there were a load of speakers, which I stayed for. Then I had to try to get home… but it was dark, and there waa a bit of a walk outside to get to the tube station… so I ended up standing in the lobby for about half an hour panicing and trying to prepare myself. I must have looked like such an idiot/ There were all these amazing and strong women and then there was me – cowering in a corner *sighs*

But anyway, let’s say something about the event itself.

Thousands of women from all over the UK and the rest of Europe will be travelling to London to attend the 7th Reclaim the Night march on Saturday 27th November 2010. Be one of them!

In the summer a U.K. study revieled that a significant number of people thought that rape victims were at least partially to blame for their attacks. The various reasons that respondents blamed women for were the unsurprising — if she had been drinking, if she had worn something revealing, if she had engaged in some other kind of sexual contact with the rapist, etc. — but no less disturbing than they’ve always been.

In Britain, it is estimated that one in two women will experience domestic violence, sexual assault or stalking during their lifetime, and rape convictions are at an all-time low – just 5.6% of all reported rapes end in a conviction. Every week, two women die at the hands of a former or current partner and new cases of child sexual abuse are reported weekly.

I told someone about this event last week, and they said it was “stupid”, that being able to walk the streets at night was not a right, that people should be sensible and take precausions if they are going somewhere that could be dangerous. A few problems there… number 1: After I escaped from my abusers I carried a knife for a long time as I feared that they would come after me (which insidently they did), but this resulted in me being arrested. Secondly, why is it that the potential victims are being punished by having to be constantly on edge or even by not going out at all, whereas the would be attackers are free to go and do whatever they like?

An attempt to express the feelings that a child goes through during an abusive upbringing. This needs some editing, I wrote it while still semi-dissociaty after a flashback while the feelings were still there so the grammar and stuff needs looking at.

They claim that they love and care for you, but that you need to be taught about the horrors and evils of the world to be made stronger. They both protect and comfort you, but also place you in situations where you feel that you are going to die you experience pain so intense that you cannot think; your head spins; our insides burn; you can no longer remember who you are or why you are here.

All you know is pain, all you feel in desperation. You consider crying out for help, but no one will listen, you can’t stop nor change what is happening. No matter that you do or say the pain will never stop. You are told the pain and suffering, the fear and horror is for your own good. Told that you need discipline, that you asked for it with your misbehaviour. Betrayal seems like too simple a word to describe the feelings of pain, loneliness and isolation.

When you try to talk about the pain you are told that you must be crazy: “nothing bad has happened to you”, “stop looking for attention”, “shut up already”. Each day you begin to feel more and more like you no longer know what is real. You stop trusting your own feelings as no one else acknowledges them so you must be over-reacting.

You learn to do everything that you are told with the upmost compliance, you forget everything that you ever wanted or hoped for. The pain is still there, lurking beneath the surface, but it is easier to pretend it’s not there, to bury the horrors that are in the deepest darkest corners of the mind.
The pain grows to an unbearable level, until your feelings start to shut down, you become numb: lonely and desperate you begin to give up on the senses that make people feel alive. You feel dead, you wish you were dead, there is no way out and there is no hope.

I’m very passionate about mental health and abuse awareness, mainly due to my own expieriances. I am very open about my past, which I know is something that many do not like, but I do not see why I should stay silent – afterall that’s what the abusers told me to do and I can’t let them win can I?

I don’t want nor do I expect pity or sympathy. I do not deserve it, and I do not want it, what happened happened and I am only who I am today because of it. I do not want hugs and people saying they are sorry, what I want, what I fight for every day, is for OTHERS to feel safe that they will not be judged. What I want is to make it so that those who currently suffer in silence scared of what may happen if they open up know that they are not alone, and maybe make it so that they no longer have to fear judgement and blame.

I know that my work and my speaking out will not end abuse, discrimination and suffering, but if I can just let people know that they are not alone and do not have to suffer in silence and maybe if I can make a few people stop and think then I am happy with that. I cannot stop abuse, I cannot change the world, but maybe I can help to plant the seeds of change, plant that idea in to the minds of others, and then they can help that idea to grow until one day change can and does occur. Maybe one day the things which I fight will no longer exist, but I doubt that I will see that day. I can do so little, but it’s the best I can do, I just have to hope that human nature is not as bad as I fear and that these seeds if change and the glimmer of hope will take root.

I tell my story, my truth, not for pity, but for the hope that I can help to ignite change in this world. I know most will not believe this, but I know my truth and I hope that a few of you know this truth too. This is why I spend so long creating websites, writting letters, speaking in schools, raising money and trying to spread awareness. It’s an inconvenient truth I know, but it’s a truth that needs to be known, I cannot just sweep it under the carpet when I know that it could help others. So I fight and strive with the hope of helping, of making the suffering of others that little bit better that bit more bearable. I wish that this truth was not there, that it did not need to be spread, but it is and it does. And for this I am sorry

Ralph Underwager, one of the founders of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, gave an interview in 1993 with the Dutch paedophile magazine, Paedika, in which he was reported as saying that paedophilia could be a responsible choice and that having sex with children could be seen as ‘part of God’s will’. The other co-founders of the FMSF were Pamela and Peter Freyd, whose adult daughter made accusations of childhood sexual abuse. The American media gave them almost unquestioning support until their daughter, psychology Professor Jennifer Freyd, felt obliged to speak out publicly, to stop the damage that she felt her parents and their organisation were doing to abuse survivors.

Other early promoters of false memory syndrome in the US were Paul and Shirley Erberle. In the 1970s, when child pornography laws were less rigid, they edited a magazine called Finger in which there were explicit illustrations of children involved in sexual acts with adults, with features entitled ‘Sexpot at Five’, ‘My First Rape, She Was Only Thirteen’ and ‘Toilet Training’. Another key figure is Felicity Goodyear-Smith, author of First Do No Harm (1993). Felicity Goodyear-Smith admits to a personal as well as professional involvement in the issue. Her husband and parents-in-law were imprisoned for sexual abuse offences, having been members of the New Zealand community, CentrePoint, that encouraged sexual intimacy amongst its members, including the children. Although the adults involved were prosecuted for these acts, including public sex with children, Goodyear-Smith claims that this was simply ‘childhood sexual experimentation’ and quotes studies that claim to show that adult-child sex can be harmless.

Child and Women Abuse Studies Unit

Do we see a pattern here in the backstories and activities of the founders and of the term over all? I do

The majority of patients in Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud’s book Studies on Hysteria (Breuer & Freud, 1895/1983) were described as having been victims of sexual abuse and up until 1895 Freud considered that the majority of his patients were suffering from the aftermath of sexual abuse in childhood.

Freud then rejected this idea. There has been a great deal of speculation regarding this decision. Freud’s biographer, Ernest Jones (Jones, 1953), proposed that given many of the fathers of his patients were part of his own social circle, it would have been difficult for Freud to publicly state that his patients had been sexually abused as children.

to then explain the symptoms of his patients, in the absence of any real trauma, Freud produced a socially acceptable theory that denied the reality of childhood sexual abuse. Once the memories of sexual abuse reported by personalities were rejected by Freud as not being memories of true events, then the interpretation of the nature of these additional, or ‘alter’ personalities had to change.

Whereas others, such as Morton Prince (Prince, 1905/1978), had embraced the idea that there could be parallel rational conscious activity which could be described as “subconscious” or “co-conscious”, Freud rejected this idea and invented his unconscious (Freud, 1915/1995). From this point onward Freud referred only to an unconscious as distinct from a subconscious (Ellenberger, 1970.).

The unconscious of Freud, therefore, was not able to hold accurate memories, assume rational control of the body, or to think as would a rational adult. If the sexual abuse was not seen to be true, then the alter personalities (or the “unconscious” for Freud) must be irrational.

Despite the many great contributions made by Freud, this theory and the acceptance of his theory meant that many victims of sexual abuse were not believed and many patients with multiple personalities (or Dissociative Identity Disorder – DID) were to be misdiagnosed. For most of the twentieth-century the reality of many DID patient’s condition was also rejected as their appearance did not fit accepted theory.

Did you know that marital Rape was only made a criminal act in the UK in 1991? Up until then it was considered impossible for a man to rape or sexually assault his wife. To quote:
“A husband cannot rape his wife unless the parties are seperated or the court has by injunction forbidden him to interfere with his wife or he has given an undertaking in court no to interfere with her.” (The Law Made Simple, The Chaucer Press, 1981)

Marriage is a contract based on mutual love, consideration and respect. Both partners have a right to their own body, and while consideration for each person’s sexual needs is normal, forced sexual acts are not. They aren’t an expression of love. They are a purposeful betrayal of the respect and trust which form a solid marriage.

Sexual abuse within marriage leaves the victim very confused. We all accept that when someone is attacked and sexually assualted by a stranger while out on the street, it is called rape, and that it is wrong and a crime But, often when a man rapes his wife it is not seen by either as a crime, or even described as rape.

Many women accept that once they are married they can’t deny their husband sex. They see it as a wifely duty to have sex whenever it is demanded. When they have been raped they take on the guilt because they may have said no, and they think thats a sign of a bad wife. It can make them feel very worthless and diminsh their levels of self confidence.

If no violence has taken place the man will often see it as consensual, as a joint decision. He denies it was rape. This adds to the confusion of the woman who starts to question the reality of what happened.

Rape is rape, regardless of the relationship between the rapist and the victim. It can be a total stranger; someone you recognise by sight, but have never really communicated with; someone you know superficially, a neighbour or a colleague; a friend, a boy-friend or a former boyfriend; a live-in partner, or a former partner; someone you are married to or have been married to in the past.

Rape is a very personal and intimate traumatic experience. Our experiences of and reactions to rape may differ widely, and although there are many similarities in the way that we feel about being the victim of rape, regardless of the relationship between us and the rapist, there are differences between stranger and intimate/acquaintance rape, and in this section I am trying to describe and offer an understanding of some of the specific problems regarding marital rape (or rape by an acuaintance) as opposed to stranger rape.

We think of rape as an individual not a group act. It is difficult to grasp its social dimention. We assume that, like sex, it takes place in private. It is difficult enough to face the idea of rape. To envisage gang rape is even harder, it is easier to ignore the distinction, to class it all as rape. Yet the historical origins of rape rest with the gang. The Latin word from which rape derives mean “to seize or carry off”. In ancient times, warring tribes abducted women, who then became the spoils of war.

It is generally believed for men who engage in gang rape to be pathological bullies, fiends or maniacs, and that gang rape is far less common that individual rape. The findings of research refute these assumptions. One of the first American researchers to analyse the characteristics of men reported to the police for rape in Philadelphia found that 43% of the 1292 men operated in pairs of gangs (Amir 1971). 55% raped in gangs and 16% in pairs. Contrary to prior research this study also revealed that 71% of these rapes were planned, rather than being the spontaneous explosion of pent up emotions. Other studies, since this, have supported this finding that gang rapes are more common than previously thought. In one study it was found that 10% of students had attempted rape in episodes involving more than one attacker (Warsaw, 1988).

Gang or pair rape, rather than being pathological, appears to be more about an extreme form of normative masculinity. It is in all-male communities such as the army, adolescent gangs, prison, college fraternities in America and competitive team ports that gang rae generally occurs. In war, gang rape takes on an added dimension and can be an integral tactic of warfare. Whether in peace or war, its function is to enhance male solidarity and domination. It appears to involve a process by which men distance themselves from everything denoting femininity. Women, homosexuals or those seen to be un-macho are the targets. The sexual orientation of many men who rape men and the victims who are raped, contrary to common belief, is heterosexual rather than homosexual (McMullen, 1990).

Humiliating and defiling women seems to enhance male cohesion is some siturations, a point made by Susan Brownmiller (1978), who also argues that male domination is strengthened by denigration and contempt for women. An Australian professor who studied gang rapes suggested that the reason that the gang defiled the female body in other appalling ways, often excretory, was in order to gain or maintain prestige within the group by over-emphasising the values of toughness and disregard for femininity other than as a sexual tool (Brownmuller, 1978)

The enhancement of male solidarity through such violence does raise the question f what constitutes and enhances male-bonding. A number of studies have indicated the mens friendships are generally less personal than womans (Rubin, 1983). Intimacy, the sharing of innermost thoughts and emotions, the main characteristic of female friendship, is not typical of male groups, where bonding is enhanced by posturing, competitiveness, toughness, jokes and risk-taking (Rotundo, 1989). Since one area of competitiveness is sexual, where to “score” is a way to impress friends, this inevitably involves exploiting women. Emphasis on “scoring” and objectifying women are forms of enhancing male power. Through rape, therefore, men can experience ppower, and avoid tenderness and intimacy, which often involve conflict for these men.

Generally men who partake in gang-rape are those who are brought up to believe that to be a man is to be hard and tough, and to keep emotional involvement at bay.